Author: Robert Barrimond

Information Strategist with a bent toward Apple technology. A believer in free enterprise with a bent on progressive ideals.
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Bankers Gone Wild

In an ideal world, this year the Street would acknowledge the public largess by having the sense not to pay bonuses of more than six digits — hey, worker bees need money in order to survive in the high-cost New York City area — and they would make a nice, voluntary contribution to the government that saved it. But the Street isn’t in the gratitude business; it’s in the making-money business.

via Allan Sloan – Let Wall Street run wild, without my money – washingtonpost.com.

It’s obscene to pay bonuses for some of the most colossal failures in banking history.  This is just not right.

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Enterprise Halo Effect

Apple Moves Closer to Snow Leopard Release:

“If Apple can pull off this effort, the company will be able to further capitalize on its hot iPhone mobile platform to make inroads against  Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile in enterprise environments.”

(Via eWeek.)

Apple might actually have an executable enterprise strategy here instead of trying to boil the ocean by offering me-too software to established enterprise competitors. Mobile Access Server is an important sign of where Apple might be going with the iPhone platform. Apple is incrementally trying to attack large enterprise akin to the so-called halo effect of the iPhone on Mac sales in the consumer market. Is this Apple setting the stage for Apple to back the iPhone platform in the enterprise? It sounds interesting since they would be replicating Microsoft’s success against mainframe/Unix. Microsoft used Office to weaponize Windows against Unix environments. I think the hardware analog here is Office/iPhone Windows/Xserve.

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Worth Every Penny

Mac vs. PC: What You Don’t Get for $699 – BusinessWeek:

“PC makers in the Windows camp have done everything possible to make their products progressively worse by cutting corners to save pennies per unit and boost sales volume. There’s good reason Apple is seeing healthy profits while grabbing market share. It refuses to budge on quality and so charges a higher price. Rather than running ads that seem clever at first but really aren’t, the Windows guys ought to take the hint and just build better computers.”

(Via BusinessWeek.)

How a $699 really costs $1500 but all you really get is $699 worth of computer.

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Why I am a Mac user

Microsoft’s ‘Apple tax’ needs a refund | Mac | MacUser | Macworld:

“Kay would have you believe that everything can be reduced to quantitative measurements, and that’s emblematic of the way Microsoft operates. But there are plenty of important qualitative differences as well. The report bandies about the term ‘cool’ like a four-letter word, but it mistakes the trappings of ‘cool’ for its substance. True coolness is never really about appearance and only those who just don’t get it claim that it is. Apple’s computers are fantastically designed and aesthetically attractive, but that’s not what makes them cool—what makes them cool is what they allow their users to do. And for many, that’s worth a few extra bucks.”

(Via Macworld.)

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Paying for the Name

Microsoft’s latest ad attacks Mac aesthetics, computing power — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:

“The strangest point of this ad is that Giampaolo didn’t get the portability, battery life, and power he was looking for, he just ended up with a cheap-appearing machine that obscured its real technical limitations under a flashy layer of misleading, specification-oriented marketing, the very thing he thought he was avoiding with HP: buying a brand rather than a computer. And that’s exactly what Microsoft wants people to do: buy its brand rather than a computer that does what they want it to do.”

(Via Roughly Drafted.)

Great summary on why Microsoft can’t even sell itself. It has to sell others. I wonder how Dell or Lenovo feel about this ad.

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Most Americans Don’t Blame Obama for Economy

Most Americans Don’t Blame Obama for Economy, Poll Finds – washingtonpost.com:

“The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama’s election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.”

Poll Results

(Via The Washington Post.)

It looks like the public is still in a realistic mood. Still, Obama’s plan needs to start having some effects soon or the public will turn on him.

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Doe or Die

An Ultimatum for Carmakers From Obama – NYTimes.com:

“‘And so today, I am announcing that my administration will offer G.M. and Chrysler a limited period of time to work with creditors, unions and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional tax dollars; a period during which they must produce plans that would give the American people confidence in their long-term prospects for success,’ Mr. Obama said.”

(Via NY Times.)

If only private shareholders, particularly institutions, would be so activist, we wouldn’t be in a far better position.

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The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Crisis of Credit Visualized on Vimeo:


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis.

Crisisofcredit.com

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jonathanjarvis.com.

Support the project and buy a T-Shirt! cafepress.com/crisisofcredit

© Copyright 2009 Jonathan Jarvis

(Via Vimeo.)

Credit crisis in short animated film. Lays it all out quite nicely.